Canadian Web Developers' Bloghttps://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs
Wed, 22 Jul 2015 05:06:47 +0000en-UShourly1All the topics you like in one placehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/WPqE57WyM7Y/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/04/20/all-the-topics-you-like-in-one-place/#respondFri, 20 Apr 2012 09:14:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/04/20/all-the-topics-you-like-in-one-place/If you read this, it’s because you follow this blog for one way or another. In the spirit of simplification, we will merge our MSDN blogs in one place.

That means, that all blog posts that was done and that will be done on topics for Web developers, Mobile developers and solution developers will all be transferred to the general developer one. This will be your one-stop for all development topics going from Web, mobile, cloud and more! We’ll add soon a way for you to easily filter by the topics that interest you, but if you are like me, you’ll love to hear from all topics as even if you have an expertise, it’s critical in our jobs to know what’s happening in another sphere of the IT world.

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/04/20/all-the-topics-you-like-in-one-place/feed/0https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/04/20/all-the-topics-you-like-in-one-place/Top 10 resources for HTML5 developershttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/JdPzHQPfM6M/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/19/top-10-resources-for-html5-developers/#respondMon, 19 Mar 2012 12:49:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/19/top-10-resources-for-html5-developers/If you tell me you never heard about HTML5, I won’t believe you. It’s everywhere and we like this! As an HTML5 enthusiast, I had to learn this new version of HTML. Like you I had to search the Web, find good resources and sometimes, bad websites that just make me loose my times. I think that a list of my top 10 best resources for HTML5 developers could help shorter the time you’ll take to learn this awesome technology.

Dive into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim From all the resources I saw, this online book from Mark Pilgrim is still one of my best resources to learn the basics of HTML5.

HTML5 and CSS3 techniques you can use todaySometimes videos are a better way to learn. At TechDays 2011, we had some awesome speakers and some of them talked about HTML5 and CSS3 techniques that you can use today. It’s a great way to have a quick one hour overview of what you can build in your next awesome website or Web application.

Application development with HTML5I love videos and another great presentation we had at TechDays last year was about HTML5. It’s an introduction of the new version of HTML in a simple way for Web developers. Chris and Nathaniel did a great job by presenting on this topic and I hope you’ll like it as much and they had fun to present it.

HTML5 Center by Sourceforge & Microsoft This is a blog made by some coworker in the U.S. in collaboration with Sourceforge. It’s a great blog with interesting subjects like adoption strategy, canvas, mobility, SVG and more.

HTML5 for Web Designers on A Book Apart Some people prefer books, so it’s why I added this awesome book on the list. Even if the title said for Web Designers, it’s a good start to learn the most powerful HTML specification ever written.

IE Test DriveThis site is not only about Internet Explorer: it contains a lot of awesome demos to see what HTML5 is capable of. One part of learning is also to look at the source code of cool demonstrations.

HTML5 & Friends by Mozilla We believe that HTML5 is all about working together. It’s a Web standard and everyone that is doing great stuff with this technology is our friend. Mozilla also did a great job to put a simple documentation for developers that have interest to learn the new elements and features of HTML5.

HTML5 W3C specificationI wasn’t sure if I was going to put the specification on this list. It’s probably the best resource out there since it’s the specification of this standard, but is it really the best place to look? It’s more than 900 pages and not easy to read, but some people want the real stuff, so here it is!

When can I use and ModernizrI cheat, these are not resources that will help you to learn HTML5, but they will certainly help you put the 5 in HTML. The first one, When can I use, is all about helping you know which features of HTML5 are supported in which browsers. Really helpful has the specification is not final yet. The other one, Modernizr, is a free Open Source library that will help you do features detections in your code. NO, I don’t talk about browser version detection… don’t do that! Also, they have a great list of polyfills that will help you support older browsers. You won’t be able to live without these two…

Cut the ropeWhat? This is not a resource? I explained to my boss that if I want to be able to showcase how HTML5 is awesome, I need to test some of the most overwhelming examples on the Web. Only for professional purpose!

Trust me, this is the point of the iceberg, There are so many resources on HTML5 on the Web, that I would be able to make the "Top 100 resources for HTML5 developers" blog post. I hope these resources will help you get started or give you a good start to take your expertise to the next level. Did you have any “I can’t believe you didn’t put it on your top 10" resources? Share your secret weapon!

P.S.: For those who wants to know who is the guy in the picture, it’s Christian Heilmann, a Developer Evangelist from Mozilla, with an Internet Explorer 9 “I have standard” T-shirt. I thought it could be funny to use this image for this blog post.

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/19/top-10-resources-for-html5-developers/feed/0https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/19/top-10-resources-for-html5-developers/The eradication of Internet Explorer 6 off the planethttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/db2IQenjI4s/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/06/the-eradication-of-internet-explorer-6-off-the-planet/#respondTue, 06 Mar 2012 10:56:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/06/the-eradication-of-internet-explorer-6-off-the-planet/I know, you still hear about Internet Explorer 6. This browser was born 10 years ago and some people still use it. We really think it’s time for us to say goodbye to this old version of our browser.

To help us track the usage of IE6, we created a website you probably see a couple of times: IE6 countdown. It tracks the usage of this version of the browser everywhere in the world. If you are a fan of Web standard like myself, you probably want the usage go under the actual 7.1%. Actually, 0% would be awesome!

There are three ways you can help us, and help Web developers, to get Internet Explorer 6 eradication:

Ask your customer to upgradeIf you have a website or a Web application, you can add a tiny piece of code to your website to notify your customer to upgrade to the latest version of the browser. It’s easy to add and it won’t stop your visitors using your site. You can grab the code here. If you want to be more aggressive, you can create your own code to force people to upgrade.

Educate othersIt’s not just about ourselves: we need to educate others. Think about your coworker, who are still supporting this version. You need to also think about non technical ones. Vendors that propose to your customer the support. Your father that didn’t upgrade to a newer version. Everybody that use or support IE6 need to know that they are using a browser that is not supported by us anymore, but also, that is more than 10 years old.

Share this blog post or the IE6 Countdown website Sharing this blog post or the website is a good idea to educate others. Use your social media and share them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+. The more we will inform people, the less we will have to take care of IE6.

So, will you help us eradicate Internet Explorer 6 off the planet? I mean, of the universe!?

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/06/the-eradication-of-internet-explorer-6-off-the-planet/feed/0https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/03/06/the-eradication-of-internet-explorer-6-off-the-planet/Awesome tools you can use to build your next HTML5 website or applicationhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/l6x0NVcm5yk/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/21/awesome-tools-you-can-use-to-build-your-next-html5-website-or-application/#respondTue, 21 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/21/awesome-tools-you-can-use-to-build-your-next-html5-website-or-application/Even if the actual version of HTML as been discussed for a couple of years now, it is fairly new. We see a lot more enthusiasts around this new version of this Web standard, and trust me; it's just a beginning. If you have already started to give a closer look to the new features and elements, you probably asked yourself where are the tools to help you build your next amazing HTML5 website or application?

We are starting to see more and more IDE (Integrated Development Environment) adding HTML5 support to their existing tool. When we talked about support of HTML5, most of the time we talked about syntax helper. You don’t have to always remember all elements from a programming language so these tools will help you create your code easily. As the usage of HTML5 is growing considerably, we will see soon more IDEs that will help us create the UI without coding. Let me introduce you some of them, that you may or may not know:

WebMatrix

WebMatrix is my IDE of choice when I do HTML5. It’s a simple free tool that let you code some HTML5 magic with some IntelliSense help. The IntelliSense will help me find the right element I was trying to use, but also close the tag for me. Even if you are a HTML5 pro, sometimes your memory needs some help. What is great with this tool too is that I can easily publish, direct from the interface, to my FTP account: no need of a thirs party application.

Expression Web

If you are looking forward to use something with UI preview, Expression Web in the next tool in my Web developer weapon list. It’s a great software that also has IntelliSense for HTML5 and CSS3, but it let you preview directly in the tools your masterpiece with the SuperPreview feature. It’s not just about Internet Explorer 9; you can see the rendering of your website on other browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari. You can try it for free.

Visual Studio

If you are a .NET developer, you already know this tool, so it’s easier for you to use a tool you already know. You can choose between more than one version, but we also have a free version for you: Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. With this tool, you can easily build your HTML5 website or application with all the benefits of this amazing software. If you already use another Visual Studio version, you can also install the Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1 that adds CSS3 support and updates the HTML5 IntelliSense and validation, including new JavaScript API's.

Notepad

I’m serious. You can even use Notepad. In fact, you can use any text editor as HTML5 is a markup language, so you don’t need any compiler. The applications I showed you before are there to help you code more quickly and easily, but you have the freedom to use anything you want!

I know there are more tools available on the Web, but I wanted to introduce you to the tools we have at Microsoft. I really think that we are doing great stuff with this three IDEs, but let me tell you something that is not a secret: these tools will get better and better with their new releases, so keep on eyes on them! Did you use WebMatrix, Expression Design or Visual Studio for your HTML5 needs? What is your IDE, Microsoft or not, of choice? Share your thoughts!

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/21/awesome-tools-you-can-use-to-build-your-next-html5-website-or-application/feed/0https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/21/awesome-tools-you-can-use-to-build-your-next-html5-website-or-application/What the heck is Responsive Web Design?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/sTeUm41zFdY/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/15/what-the-heck-is-responsive-web-design/#commentsWed, 15 Feb 2012 11:31:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/15/what-the-heck-is-responsive-web-design/As a Web developer, we need to think about many devices, screen sizes and orientations. It’s not enough now to build our application or website to target only desktop screens: you need to keep in mind that your visitors will come to your site with their smartphones, their netbooks, their tablets, their slates and even their living room TV. We need to give them a good experience.

Instead of creating a specific version for the most common screen resolution or for specific mobile experience, Responsive Web Design is all about creating an experience that will keep in mind the user’s needs instead of ours. Flexibility is the keyword as we adapt to various devices' capabilities, instead of configurations.

How many times did you tried to see a website that is not mobile-friendly? Everything is too big for the size of the screen. You have to zoom-in, zoom-out, and it’s very frustrating. With a fixed-width design, the owner will have to create a version for each device that their customers use.

So what is really this Responsive Design thing? It’s base on three technical aspects:

Media queries

A flexible grid-based layout

Flexible images and media

Media Queries

Media queries are like having if statement in your CSS. You can define which CSS stylesheet will be loaded depending on different criteria, like the size of the screen. Everything is managed by the browser and there is no need to do like we did in the past with some JavaScript and page reloading. Here are some examples:

Everybody loves pixels. We used pixels for a long time in the Web, and Designer loves them too. The problem is that the screen representation of a pixel is different on every device or screens. The answers in using a flexible grid-bases layout reside in percentage or em for sizing. The idea is to use relative size for text, width and margins.

Flexible images and media

The last part, but not the less important is about your media. The images and videos needs to be flexible too. It’s a basic principle that allows you to scale or shrink your media with CSS. You can also use a technique with alternate version of the media or sometimes, when it makes sense, no media at all.

If you want to see Responsive Web Design in action, you can go to http://mediaqueri.es/ that list some great examples. Use your smarthphone, your tablet or resize your desktop Web browser: you will see the magic of Responsive Web Design. This blog post is a good start to understand the idea behind it, but if you have an interest in this topic, I will be more than happy to make other blog posts to dive deeper into the subject. For those of you that can’t wait, one of the best book out there is the one from A Book Apart. Oh and if you are in Montreal, I’ll do a presentation on Responsive Web Design (in French) at HTML5mtl next week.

Do you think Responsive Web Design is the way to go? Do you already use it? Did you see amazing implementation of this technique on the Web? Share your thoughts.

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/15/what-the-heck-is-responsive-web-design/feed/4https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/15/what-the-heck-is-responsive-web-design/How to get up to speed with a new technologyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/dQqojHJJ1m8/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/12/how-to-get-up-to-speed-with-a-new-technology/#respondSun, 12 Feb 2012 08:22:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/12/how-to-get-up-to-speed-with-a-new-technology/

You are in front of your computer, wanting to learn a new technology for your job, or because you have this awesome idea on what will be the next Angry Birds. Whether you are a professional, a student or a hobbyist, learning a technology is sometimes a challenge. Where to start? In this blog post, I will give you my tips around getting up to speed with a new technology.

Before your start

If you are not limited to a specific technology, like someone who has to learn the next programming language for their work, you may ask yourself, which one fit the best my needs. A good way to see what the industry is using or what is the thoughts about this new HTML5 thing you saw on the Web last day, online community is the best place to start. I go often to a place call Stack Overflow. It’s really a good place for technical and sometimes, more high level discussion/questions. You can also go to places like LinkedIn.

I know which programming language I want to learn

Now you know what you want to learn. Personaly, I'm still a fan of book, or in a digital world, eBook. You can buy great books on site like Amazon or directly from the publisher like O’reilly or Microsoft Press. You can also go on a site like the MSDN blog to find great resources. If you are ready to invest some money, you can use website like Lynda.com that gives you a lot of tutorial for a monthly fee. Furthermore, never underestimate good music for the learning process!

I want to go further

If you want to learn more, you can also go to conference or users group. There are so many conferences about technology that you have plenty of choices. Just in the top of my head for the next month, I can suggest you PrairieDevCon for Calgary people, Confoo for Montreal people or Le Web à Québec for French people. OK, I know more conferences from Quebec since I’m living there, but search the Web, and you will find a lot more. Don’t forget user groups: there are so many that offer top quality presentation for free or a minimal fee. Here is a list to start.

Prove your knowledge

What happening after I learn the technology? For sure, you will use it for the project or the work you had in mind, but there are more ways to test your competencies. You can take a certification exam or participate in some competitions, hackfests or even take advantage of things like the Developer Movement. A great way to build your next idea, have some fun, be creative, win some prize and for sure, validate your learning process.

It’s not a big step by step process, but these are my tricks to get up to speed with a new technology, what are yours? How do you start the learning process?

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/12/how-to-get-up-to-speed-with-a-new-technology/feed/0https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/02/12/how-to-get-up-to-speed-with-a-new-technology/Javascript and CSS Minifying/Bundling with the Microsoft.Web.Optimization Nuget packagehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/_bewUKSWB54/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/20/javascript-and-css-minifyingbundling-with-the-microsoft-web-optimization-nuget-package/#respondFri, 20 Jan 2012 10:59:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/20/javascript-and-css-minifyingbundling-with-the-microsoft-web-optimization-nuget-package/This blog post is a guest post from Maxime Rouiller. If you want to make blog post about Web technology, please contact me at fredh@microsoft.com.

Maxime Rouiller is a passionate .NET technology specialist and ASP.NET MVP, working for 8 years in large software development, advocating Agile and TDD. Aware of the latest technological trends, he intervenes as a specialist in the .NET Montreal usergroup and acts regularly as a speaker for Web Form programmers on the MVC platform.

So I’ve been wanting to write about this since the build and only gotten around to do it now.

When you write C# code, you rather have multiple small files with clear separation of concerns. This allows you to have small and clear classes, and the compiler will never complain about it. However, in Javascript, you want to have smaller files. Most of the time in the .NET environment, there wasn’t any integrated way of doing so. Either it required an EXE call or outputing .min.js files.

This caused problems as we had to alter our Development version of our HTML to fit our Production environment. Microsoft released this tid bit early because it’s probably going to be integrated in the .NET 4.5 framework but is making it available to us now.

Please be aware that “Microsoft.*” DLLs are not part of the official framework and when they do, they will probably be changed namespace to “System.*”.

Pre-requisites

First, you will need NuGet to install the following packages:

Microsoft.Web.Optimization

WebActivator

How it works

Now, the way the JS/CSS minifying works is that it will dynamically inspect all your files, read them, minify them and then cache the result to be served later. This allows us to modify our files and have all the files re-minified. When one of our JS/CSS files get modified again, this process will restart until either the cache expires or a file change.

Setting up the base work

For the minify-er to work, it will require the registration of a HttpModule. It’s not already included in the Microsoft.Web.Optimization package, but it will be necessary for us to add it if we want it to work.

The previous code will do the following, when your application start, it will register a dynamic HttpModule.

Now that the base work is done, we’ll jump right ahead to the configuration of the folders.

Configuring the package

Now that the HttpModule is properly registered, we need to tell the Module when to activate itself. In my specific scenario, I wanted to have jQuery, underscore.js and Backbone.js in that specific order.

By default, the Module will load most core frameworks first (jQuery, MooTools, prototype, scriptaculous) and then load the rest of the files that doesn’t match the wildcards after. The filters are done so that jQuery plugins will load after the jQuery core library, and jQuery UI will load after jQuery.

We first inherit from the default order. Then, we add the default file ordering, which will take care of the jQuery ordering for us. Then, we add the other files that we require to the list. The only thing left is to alter our RegisterFolders method to fix that.

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/20/javascript-and-css-minifyingbundling-with-the-microsoft-web-optimization-nuget-package/feed/0https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/20/javascript-and-css-minifyingbundling-with-the-microsoft-web-optimization-nuget-package/Learn HTML5 at Confoohttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/qrur19Cc1bc/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/13/learn-html5-at-confoo/#commentsFri, 13 Jan 2012 07:44:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/13/learn-html5-at-confoo/Ever wanted to learn more about HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript? You want to discover what you can accomplish with this new technology, but you don’t know where to start? Do you struggle to find some time to sit down and become a HTML5 ninja?

If you say yes to one of those questions, I have good news for you: Confoo is doing another HTML5 training this year. The ConFoo HTML5 training session will be the ideal place to learn about these technologies during two full days. The web converges towards HTML5 for Web application, Website and now, mobile application too. It is critical to know what are the advantages, the actual limitations and the possibilities offered by this technology.

The training will be held on February 27-28 at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure hotel by expert of the industry. Note that the training will be in French, but the trainers understands English. The numbers of seats are limited to 16, so hurry up. For more information and register for the training, go to the Confoo website http://confoo.ca/en/2012/session/html5 .

See you there and be ready for an awesome training!

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/13/learn-html5-at-confoo/feed/1https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2012/01/13/learn-html5-at-confoo/We’ll be right back after this break…http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/5vKq2JZf-ww/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2011/11/29/well-be-right-back-after-this-break/#commentsTue, 29 Nov 2011 10:52:31 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2011/11/29/well-be-right-back-after-this-break/Thanks Pierre for this post…

Hello folks,

Today started very very early, we were leaving the hotel for the conference center a 5:30am… yes, 5:30am. however we had a great view from the hotel window.

we were onsite at the Montreal Palais des Congres, to put the finishing touches on our Keynote presentation. This morning, we tried something a little different. we put together something a little special. not the usual keynote. We put together a role playing experiment with our stars. Our local Microsoft Regional Director, Guy Barrette, our local developer evangelist Frederic Harper, and Rick Claus our IT pro evangelist.

We lived through a simulation of a real world IT problems that a lot of enterprises are facing these days. Old ASP.Net applications, obsolete servers, misconceptions about cloud computing to name a few…

The formula was very well received by the attendees since it provided real, to the point answers and live demos of the Microsoft Azure capabilities from the IT pro perspective, the developer perspective and the solution architect perspective.

TechDays 2011 Montreal is off to a great start. Great attendees, fantastic speakers, awesome content and extraordinary partners.

]]>https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2011/11/29/well-be-right-back-after-this-break/feed/1https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2011/11/29/well-be-right-back-after-this-break/Is your browser secure?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianWebDevelopersBlog/~3/sNVyMCeNrkM/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2011/11/27/is-your-browser-secure/#commentsSun, 27 Nov 2011 10:04:00 +0000https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cdnwebdevs/2011/11/27/is-your-browser-secure/Choosing a browser is also a choice around security. Most of what we do on the computer today is in the browser: we read some news site, learn a new technology, chat with our friends, watch funny videos… As a big part of our online life in inside the browser, we need one that will protect us, protect our computer and our data.

When you look at the security of your browser, you need to give a closer look to three types of threats:

Does the browser filter out scripts on the client to help protect against XSS attacks?

Does the browser implement content security policy that websites can use to mitigate XSS and CSRF attacks?

Can the browser sanitize HTML to remove potentially problematic code?

Does the browser have features that websites can use to help protect you from "click jacking" attacks?

I don’t want to think about all of this, can you just tell me if Internet Explorer 9 is secure?

I know. These are a lot of questions to ask, and if you are not a security expert of don’t know everything on the list, it’s a lot to check. There are five important things that I can tell you about Internet Explorer 9 that give me an entire trust level about this awesome and secure browser:

Provides a better warning system for potentially dangerous downloads. A new feature, Application Reputation, helps you to make safer decisions when you download content from the Internet.

Filters content that might be dangerous. The ActiveX Filtering feature allows you to choose which websites can run ActiveX controls. By allowing ActiveX controls only on the sites you trust, you can reduce the number of ways cybercriminals can harm you.

Helps you avoid phishing scams and malware. SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer 9 helps protect you from websites that are suspected of hosting malicious content. When the SmartScreen Filter detects that a site may be unsafe, you will see an alert that will give you recommended actions.

Helps protect against cross-site scripting attacks. Cybercriminals look for vulnerabilities in website code so that they can insert malicious scripts which gather private information about site visitors.

So what can I do to stay safer online?

Use secured connections: make sure you are opening secured connections to the pages; you do this by typing in "HTTPS" at the beginning of a URL. Most of the websites that ask you important information should use this protocol. If not, think about it.

Use your best judgment: When you read email or surf the Internet, you should be wary of scams that try to steal your personal information (identity theft), your money, or both. Many of these scams are known as "phishing scams" because they "fish" for your information. More information here.

Be sure to have the latest update for your operating system. Update your Windows machine here.